|
d55c771
|
It's neither possible nor desirable for individuals or nations to change completely, and to discard everything of their former identities. The challenge, for nations as for individuals in crisis, is to figure out which parts of their identities are already functioning well and don't need changing, and which parts are no longer working and do need changing.
|
|
|
Jared Diamond |
|
6b3372a
|
THE IMPORTANCE OF lethal microbes in human history is well illustrated by Europeans' conquest and depopulation of the New World. Far more Native Americans died in bed from Eurasian germs than on the battlefield from European guns and swords. Those germs undermined Indian resistance by killing most Indians and their leaders and by sapping the survivors' morale.
|
|
|
Jared Diamond |
|
14609f1
|
food production was indirectly a prerequisite for the development of guns, germs, and steel. Hence geographic variation in whether, or when, the peoples of different continents became farmers and herders explains to a large extent their subsequent contrasting fates.
|
|
|
Jared Diamond |
|
15f02a4
|
Finland's crisis (Chapter 2) exploded with the Soviet Union's massive attack upon Finland on November 30, 1939. In the resulting Winter War, Finland was virtually abandoned by all of its potential allies and sustained heavy losses, but nevertheless succeeded in preserving its independence against the Soviet Union, whose population outnumbered Finland's by 40 to 1. I spent a summer in Finland 20 years later, hosted by veterans and widows and..
|
|
|
Jared Diamond |
|
8ca7656
|
Every time that an animal eats a plant or another animal, the conversion of food biomass into the consumer's biomass involves an efficiency of much less than 100 percent: typically around 10 percent. That is, it takes around 10,000 pounds of corn to grow a 1,000-pound cow. If instead you want to grow 1,000 pounds of carnivore, you have to feed it 10,000 pounds of herbivore grown on 100,000 pounds of corn. Even among herbivores and omnivores..
|
|
|
Jared Diamond |
|
57be4a1
|
The whole modern world has been shaped by lopsided outcomes.
|
|
|
Jared Diamond |
|
9f6e899
|
The U.S. has so many rules and regulations, because of fear of being sued, that kids give up on the opportunity for personal exploration. A pool has to be fenced so that it's not an 'attractive nuisance.' Most New Guineans don't have pools, but even the rivers that we frequented didn't have signs saying 'Jump at your own risk,' because it's obvious. Why would I jump unless I'm prepared for the consequences? Responsibility in the U.S. has be..
|
|
|
Jared Diamond |
|
057d038
|
In short, we evolved, like other animals, to win the reproduction game. That contest has a single aim, to leave as many descendants as possible.
|
|
|
Jared Diamond |
|
5392ab6
|
In contrast, once food can be stockpiled, a political elite can gain control of food produced by others, assert the right of taxation, escape the need to feed itself, and engage full-time in political activities.
|
|
|
Jared Diamond |
|
3bf5331
|
Asi pues, tanto las sociedades como los grupos humanos mas pequenos pueden tomar decisiones catastroficas por toda una serie secuenciada de razones: la imposibilidad de prever un problema, la imposibilidad de percibirlo una vez que se ha producido, la incapacidad para disponerse a resolverlo una vez que se ha percibido y el fracaso en las tentativas de resolverlos
|
|
|
Jared Diamond |
|
8a90851
|
Thus, Norse society's structure created a conflict between the short-term interests of those in power, and the long-term interests of the society as a whole.
|
|
|
Jared Diamond |
|
49a015e
|
Naturally, what makes patriotic and religious fanatics such dangerous opponents is not the deaths of the fanatics themselves, but their willingness to accept the deaths of a fraction of their number in order to annihilate or crush their infidel enemy.
|
|
|
Jared Diamond |
|
d7a6276
|
invokes the supposed stimulatory effects of their homeland's cold climate and the inhibitory effects of hot, humid, tropical climates on human creativity and energy. Perhaps the seasonally variable climate at hight latitudes poses more diverses challenges that does a seasonally constant tropical climate
|
|
|
Jared Diamond |
|
6f89da0
|
four suggested explanations are ideological, rather than economic or organizational: (1) Risk-taking behavior, essential for efforts at innovation, is more widespread in some societies than in others. (2) The scientific outlook is a unique feature of post-Renaissance European society that has contributed heavily to its modern technological preeminence. (3) Tolerance of diverse views and of heretics fosters innovation, whereas a strongly tra..
|
|
|
Jared Diamond |
|
e46aa0a
|
African and European skulls of half a million years ago were sufficiently similar to skulls of us moderns that they are classified in our species, Homo sapiens, instead
|
|
|
Jared Diamond |
|
1358e2c
|
Britain never regained its naval and economic dominance over the world, and it remains notoriously conflicted ("Brexit") about its role in Europe. But Britain is still among the world's six richest nations, is still a parliamentary democracy under a figurehead monarch, is still a world leader in science and technology, and still maintains as its currency the pound sterling rather than the euro"
|
|
identity
|
Jared Diamond |
|
57495ef
|
Pizarro captured Atahuallpa within a few minutes after the two leaders first set eyes on each other. Pizarro proceeded to hold his prisoner for eight months, while extracting history's largest ransom in return for a promise to free him. After the ransom--enough gold to fill a room 22 feet long by 17 feet wide to a height of over 8 feet--was delivered, Pizarro reneged on his promise and executed Atahuallpa.
|
|
|
Jared Diamond |
|
e9acbdf
|
half of its carbon 14 content decays into nitrogen 14 every 5,700 years, until
|
|
|
Jared Diamond |
|
7e8b88e
|
Still another factor is compatibility with vested interests. This book, like probably every other typed document you have ever read, was typed with a QWERTY keyboard, named for the left-most six letters in its upper row. Unbelievable as it may now sound, that keyboard layout was designed in 1873 as a feat of anti-engineering. It employs a whole series of perverse tricks designed to force typists to type as slowly as possible, such as scatte..
|
|
|
Jared Diamond |
|
07645ef
|
tests of cognitive ability (like IQ tests) tend to measure cultural learning and not pure innate intelligence, whatever that is.
|
|
|
Jared Diamond |
|
8bca40e
|
Rigidity or inflexibility can be the result of a previous history of abuse or trauma, or of an upbringing that offered a child no permission to experiment or to deviate from the family norms. Flexibility can come from the freedom of having been allowed to make one's own choices as one was growing up.
|
|
flexibility
|
Jared Diamond |
|
a39a349
|
Nations and individuals accept national and individual responsibility to take action to solve the problem, or else deny responsibility by self-pity, blaming others, and assuming the role of victim.
|
|
self-pity
|
Jared Diamond |
|
ea6a1a4
|
Almost all studies of child development emphasize the role of childhood stimulation and activity in promoting mental development, and stress the irreversible mental stunting associated with reduced childhood stimulation.
|
|
|
Jared Diamond |
|
bf4643d
|
Montana would have been better off in the long run if it had never mined copper at all but had just imported it from Chile, leaving the resulting problems to the Chileans! It
|
|
|
Jared Diamond |
|
f61a65f
|
Recent discoveries about apes suggest, however, that a gorilla or common chimp stands at least as good a chance of being murdered as the average human.
|
|
|
Jared Diamond |
|
d03e956
|
All of these parallels between Mesoamerican and ancient western Eurasian writing testify to the underlying universality of human creativity.
|
|
|
Jared Diamond |
|
6d1d1c5
|
Yes, world history is indeed such an onion! But that peeling back of the onion's layers is fascinating, challenging--and of overwhelming importance to us today, as we seek to grasp our past's lessons for our future.
|
|
|
Jared Diamond |
|
0fda62d
|
The difference between a kleptocrat and a wise statesman, between a robber baron and a public benefactor, is merely one of degree: a matter of just how large a percentage of the tribute extracted from producers is retained by the elite, and how much the commoners like the public uses to which the redistributed tribute is put.
|
|
|
Jared Diamond |
|
1b01b47
|
That need for police and laws and moral commandments to be nice to strangers doesn't arise in tiny societies, in which everyone knows everyone else.
|
|
|
Jared Diamond |
|
4a8d4fc
|
Severe problems of overpopulation, environmental impact, and climate change cannot persist indefinitely: sooner or later they are likely to resolve themselves, whether in the manner of Rwanda or in some other manner not of our devising, if we don't succeed in solving them by our own actions.
|
|
|
Jared Diamond |
|
adde66d
|
The people whose children had to walk barefoot to school killed the people who could buy shoes for theirs.
|
|
|
Jared Diamond |
|
9520c9a
|
Thus, Fertile Crescent and eastern Mediterranean societies had the misfortune to arise in an ecologically fragile environment. They committed ecological suicide by destroying their own resource base.
|
|
|
Jared Diamond |
|
63041c3
|
Still later, after the invention of saddles and stirrups, horses allowed the Huns and successive waves of other peoples from the Asian steppes to terrorize the Roman Empire and its successor states, culminating in the Mongol conquests of much of Asia and Russia in the 13th and 14th centuries A.D. Only with the introduction of trucks and tanks in World War I did horses finally become supplanted as the main assault vehicle and means of fast t..
|
|
|
Jared Diamond |
|
21fbd3a
|
Stored food can also feed priests, who provide religious justification for wars of conquest;
|
|
|
Jared Diamond |
|
dd2a9d9
|
As on Easter Island and at Chaco Canyon, Maya peak population numbers were followed swiftly by political and social collapse. Paralleling the eventual extension of agriculture from Easter Island's coastal lowlands to its uplands, and from the Mimbres floodplain to the hills, Copan's inhabitants also expanded from the floodplain to the more fragile hill slopes, leaving them with a larger population to feed when the agricultural boom in the h..
|
|
|
Jared Diamond |
|
6d5194a
|
Recreational sex is thus supposed to function as the glue holding a human couple together while they cooperate in rearing their helpless baby.
|
|
sex
recreational-sex
monogamy
|
Jared Diamond |
|
a57f524
|
Almost everywhere else in the world, my archaeologist friends have an uphill struggle to convince governments that what archaeologists do has any conceivable practical value. They try to get funding agencies to understand that studies of the fates of past societies may help us understand what could happen to societies living in that same area today. In particular, they reason, environmental damage that developed in the past could develop ag..
|
|
|
Jared Diamond |
|
fa62628
|
society's structure created a conflict between the short-term interests of those in power, and the long-term interests of the society as a whole.
|
|
|
Jared Diamond |
|
0cf0b24
|
All these adoptions of European styles make it obvious that the Greenlanders paid very close attention to European fashions and followed them in detail. The adoptions carry the unconscious message, "We are Europeans, we are Christians, God forbid that anyone could confuse us with the Inuit." Just as Australia, when I began visiting it in the 1960s, was more British than Britain itself, Europe's most remote outpost of Greenland remained emot..
|
|
|
Jared Diamond |
|
5ba6c60
|
breeds of dogs were developed and raised for food in Aztec Mexico, Polynesia, and ancient China.
|
|
|
Jared Diamond |
|
1c6f19e
|
New Guineans old and young routinely eat mice, spiders, frogs, and other small animals that peoples elsewhere with access to large domestic mammals or large wild game species do not bother to eat. Protein
|
|
|
Jared Diamond |
|
8056e9c
|
Perhaps the most important single step in the whole history of writing was the Sumerians' introduction of phonetic representation, initially by writing an abstract noun (which could not be readily drawn as a picture) by means of the sign for a depictable noun that had the same phonetic pronunciation. For instance, it's easy to draw a recognizable picture of arrow, hard to draw a recognizable picture of life, but both are pronounced ti in Su..
|
|
|
Jared Diamond |
|
aac3baa
|
a society's fate lies in its own hands and depends substantially on its own choices.
|
|
|
Jared Diamond |
|
21fcbb7
|
Nearly half of all New Guinea languages have fewer than 500 speakers,
|
|
|
Jared Diamond |